One of the things I love about a destination festival is that it takes you away from your everyday life. And a music cruise takes the destination festival to a whole new level. When I grew up, it seemed that a cruise was something you did when you retired. The sort of trip you went on when you were afraid to fly or when you'd decided pajama jeans were the best clothing option. I knew at some point cruises had mutated into family vacations, or moving spring breaks with drunken sexual shenanigans, but nothing could prepare me for the awesomeness of the Weezer Cruise.

The cruise departed from Miami for a four-night jaunt to Cozumel and back. It featured Weezer, Sebadoh, Dinosaur Jr, the Antlers, Yuck, Free Energy and others. As well as music, there were activities and theme nights: ugly sweaters, 80s prom, and moustaches. You could try beer tasting with Boom Bip or watch the belly flop contest judged by the Antlers, attend a Q&A with Weezer, or do yoga with Star of Ozma.

Weezer are fortunate to have a wide audience demographic. Cruises are expensive and many people can't get work off in January, but despite this there was an incredibly diverse audience. There were people from Europe, Asia, Australia and North, Central and South America, and a British couple on their honeymoon. Those are just the people I met. What everyone had in common was a love of the band and a willingness to declare this loudly. I suspect this hardcore fanbase inspired the band's decision to play Pinkerton in its entirety. This 1996 album seems to be closest to the heart of the band.

Creative enthusiasm was treasured. I thought I'd see a lot of band T-shirts, but instead I saw people who made their own Weezer capes, shirts, moustaches, sweaters, flags, fingernails and custom hats. Best of all were guys from Mexico who made Weezer futbol jerseys with pirate nicknames such as "Jacques Cos-Teo" – fitting as we were in the Caribbean. The guys gave each Weezer member his own monogrammed jersey. This was a group of people that had Raditude.

My eight favourite things from the Weezer cruise

Watching Weezer play as the ship departs

As the ship set sail from Miami, Weezer did a "so many hits it hurts" set on the open-air deck with the ocean as the backdrop. Opening with Hash Pipe, a track I used to play before classes to get ready to give a lecture, it was the first chance people had to see the scope of their new music family. It set the tone for the rest of the trip as singer Rivers Cuomo leapt off stage to meander through the crowd while singing, to the top of the giant water slide presiding over the ship, obliterating the distinction between performer and audience. Throughout the trip, bands mixed with audience members. There was a total eradication of the notion of VIP, with perhaps the exception of whether you ended up with a room that had window or not. Once outside your cabin, you could end up having dinner with your favourite drummer or just as wonderful, take a day trip to the Mayan ruins of Tulum with Brian Bell, go snorkelling at a tropical paradise with Rivers, or dance until dawn with Lou Barlow. As the trip progressed, people became more confident and had the chance to tell the artists they loved how their music had affected them, a joy to both musician and fan alike. As Rivers stood atop the slide triumphantly with arms aloft wearing a captain's hat, it felt like a moment of communal success for everyone aboard.

Dressing up for an 80s prom night

On the Saturday night, there was an 80s-themed prom night. Most people took their cues from John Hughes films. Probably because a lot of them weren't alive during the 80s and others, like a couple of women from Norway, didn't have proms to begin with. This was their chance to participate in an American fantasy. The 80s costumes did not disappoint. There was taffeta and neon, thrillers and spandex. There were even the video vixens from Robert Palmer's Addicted to Love. Each outfit was more fabulous than the next: the men in pastel Miami Vice suits and ill-fitting florid tuxedos and the women in sparkly, laced monstrosities. Rivers appeared at the disco with the trip's sartorial motif of the captain's hat to have a twirl around the room. This was the prom you always wished for because people genuinely liked each other. There were no haters. It made everyone feel like royalty. I'm sure being able to legally drink alcohol helped.

It's the Lou Barlow traveling circus!

Lou Barlow played sets with Dinosaur Jr, Sebadoh and on on his own. It made for seven shows in four days. He came onboard early with Sebadoh, complaining he was resentful of his other band Dinosaur Jr because they wouldn't have to wait to get into their rooms. The first night he went from playing on the open Lido deck to the large amphitheater on the lower deck. On Friday he played the Criterion Lounge where his witty and self-deprecating between-song banter gave them the intimacy of their original conceptions. The set culminated with him doing the hit single Natural One embedded in a Bill Callahan song leading into the song Day Kitty which was sweetly dedicated to his wife. It resulted in a standing ovation. While I liked the quiet intimacy of the one-man show, others preferred the epic volume of Dinosaur Jr as the ship pulled out of Cozumel to the appalled looks from passengers on the nearby luxury liner. Sebadoh did the finale performance in the Palladium hall only to find the bass guitar had been mixed in with the Dino gear so bassist Jason had to go searching for it on another deck.

Getchoo … Weezer open the cruise. Photograph: Wendy Fonarow

Realising it's not possible to overdose on Weezer

Not only did you get to see the band play the Lido deck and two shows at the Palladium theater, there were loads of other band-themed events such as a Weezer game show, Weezer trivia, Weezer karaoke, a vow renewal overseen by "reverend" Scott, Rivers reading from the Pinkerton Diaries, and a fan-led Q&A session that produced fun, flirty and interesting questions. There were Weezer bracelets and tote bags in your room. Weezer temporary tattoos were available on deck (although a few people decided to make their cruise tattoos permanent), Weezer napkins with your drinks and, if you wanted, special Weezer cruise merchandise. I couldn't resist the embarkation photo with the cruise logo.

Cruises are sexy

There are some distinct stereotypes about cruises and these were definitely in play. There was a sexually charged atmosphere somewhere between summer camp and spring break. Once at sea, the pools, slides and Jacuzzis were filled with salt water and scantily clad men and women. Some people had rather robust shenanigans like what happened in row six during the Dinosaur Jr set, while others were content with sweet fumbling in corridors. It was nice to see how many Weezer fans have best friends of the opposite sex. There was one singles' party where people competed for the best pick-up line. I won't divulge the winner, but I'm surprised no one used "So you look like a Weezer fan …" for the prize.

As a cruise novice, I appreciated you didn't need to drive home; the room prepared with a towel in the shape of a different animal every night, and the non-stop buffet where you could take your food anywhere you liked. There were tropical concoctions in themed containers. I just had to get a margarita in a smiling coconut, which is now sitting in a place of hhonour in my office. I ate pizza at 4am just because there was a pizza available then.

Watching the yacht-rock revival unfold

Would it be a cruise without yacht rock? The company that promoted the Weezer cruise is SixthMan, based in Atlanta, Georgia, and they have an ace up their sleeves, local band Yacht Rock Revival. This would traditionally be called a covers band, but as everyone is up in arms about authenticity, I think there needs to be a reconsideration of how we think about the performance of "other written" music. In jazz, they don't call other written music "covers" they call them "standards". With their coordinated outfits, visual flair and a distinct repertoire, Yacht Rock Revival are a talented band. In late-70s polyester and a devotion to all synthetic fabrics, they played two sets that included Hall and Oates, Dan Hartman, Steely Dan and the Bee Gees. If you had any doubt you were made for dancing, Yacht Rock would assure you that you are.

Who's up for a day trip?

You'd think after two days of radio silence, you'd want to reconnect: check your emails or at least tweet about your amazing adventures, but instead people threw themselves headlong into the perilous quest of the local excursion. It appears in Cozumel they have made the wise decision to make nearly all excursions worthwhile. My best friend and I had been invited to Playa del Carmen for parasailing or to go on a boat to a sand bar in the middle of the sea where you could eat guacamole. We chose the scoot-coupe, a cross between a scooter and a car with three wheels and, in our case, no alignment. It was so bad the others in our group decided either we were drunk or that I must have been the wife of my friend and he was taking revenge on me for some misdeed in our marriage. The trip circled the island with two scenic stops and a drive through town. The waters of the Caribbean are warm and salty, perfect for anything aquatic, and walking on the beaches reminded you that you were on vacation. Halfway around the island, we helped with the final death rattles of our scoot by hitting a dirt patch and got to drive a jeep the rest of the way. The excursions were another chance to meet people from the cruise. The driver was a girl from Oklahoma who I decided to go snorkelling with afterwards. She had come on her own and made new friends every step of the way.

There was a cannonball contest!

On Friday afternoon, there was a Cannonball contest. Sebadoh were judging it. They came up with specific criteria to assess performance including factors such as water displacement, splash height and technique. People loved when contestants did a reveal like whipping off his towel or checking wind resistance before the plunge. This is not the sort of thing I've seen much of before and soon some friends from Mexico City joined us. Actually, until this moment they had been virtual friends. One of them, Santiago had sent me a question about guest lists for my column in the Guardian. It resulted in me trying to get him on guest lists in Mexico City. With all smartphones turned off, we used the old-fashioned way of connecting: calling rooms, getting the wrong person in the wrong language to set up the meeting at the cannonball contest. Yet it worked. I found out that because "professor" in Spanish is masculine, for months Santiago and all his friends thought I was a guy. They were happy to find out my only drinks of choice are Diet Coke and tequila (not together). We talked Weezer and other festivals and bands from Mexico. Santiago can't go to Coachella this year and he later justified it by saying it was because it lacks the cannonball contest. He even wrote to me asking: "Is it still cool to go to Coachella if it doesn't have a cannonball contest?" I asked my best friend once we were home why was the cannonball contest great. He said: "Cannonball contests are terrible. They are always terrible." I was shocked and asked: "Then why did I like it so much." He answered: "It's because we met Santiago at the Cannonball contest. That is what is great about the Weezer cruise. It's about the people you take away from it."